Volume 16, Issue 6, November 2015.
Jeffrey N. Love, MD, et al.

Emergency medicine (EM) educators have many
masters. These include our hospital administrations who
expect efficient patient care reflecting the priorities of safety
and quality, the accreditation council for graduate medical
education which has introduced a new competency-based
standard by which our learners must be educated, and last but
not least, our learners that are using new educational modalities
based on expanding digital platforms. To be successful,
educators must satisfy each of these masters against the
backdrop of increasing regulations, decreasing funding and
information technology that appears to decrease our time with
patients and perhaps learners in clinical practice.

Volume 16, Issue 6, November 2015.
Eric S. Holmboe, MD

Emergency medicine (EM) has always been on the frontlines of healthcare in the United States.
I experienced this reality first hand as a young general medical officer assigned to an emergency
department (ED) in a small naval hospital in the 1980s. For decades the ED has been the only site
where patients could not be legally denied care. Despite increased insurance coverage for millions of
Americans as a result of the Affordable Care Act, ED directors report an increase in patient volumes
in a recent survey.1
EDs care for patients from across the socioeconomic spectrum suffering from a
wide range of clinical conditions. As a result, the ED is still one of few components of the American
healthcare system where social justice is enacted on a regular basis. Constant turbulence in the
healthcare system, major changes in healthcare delivery, technological advances and shifting
demographic trends necessitate that EM constantly adapt and evolve as a discipline in this complex
environment.